“Why are you here?” Jed asked again.
There was a beat of silence as Nick considered his answer, and in that brief moment, Max’s anger evaporated. Nick’s logic was obvious—his father had died and he’d come to his brother for comfort. Naively, it seemed, because it was clear Jed didn’t care. Not for Nick and his grief, and even less for Frank Cooper.
“You don’t care, do you?” Nick said suddenly, echoing Max’s thoughts. “You really don’t give a shit that our dad died.”
“Why would I care?”
Jed’s tone was disinterested. There was no malice or aggression in the words, but Max heard the message loud and clear.
He thought back to the last time he’d seen Frank Cooper. It was years back, right before Nick moved him into the nursing home. He’d been a vile old man, with a vicious tongue. Nick said it was because he was ill and in pain, but Max knew better. He’d seen that kind of hate before… he’d seen it inNickbefore. It was hard to imagine that Jed bore any relation to either of them.
“Oh, man.” Nick shook his head, bewildered. “How long are you going to hold that night against him? He made a mistake. We both did. We were wrong, okay? What we said to you was wrong, but you never gave us the chance to put it right. You left.”
Jed let out a humorless bark of laughter. “I’m not gonna argue with you about shit that went down fourteen years ago. You can mourn that old bastard all you like, but leave me out of it.”
“No!” Nick’s face reddened. “You’re not getting out of this that easily. I’ve been dealing with him on my own for years. The least you can do is come to Portland with me and arrange his fucking funeral.”
Jed didn’t answer verbally, but the expression on his face left no doubt that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Max suppressed the urge to intervene. Over the past few years he’d learned that with families, some things could never be fixed. Instead you became trapped in the cycle, knowing exactly what you were doing wrong, but unable to stop it.
Nick took a wobbly step forward. For a moment, his coherency had fooled Max into forgetting he was drunk, but his weak attempt to shove Jed brought reality crashing back. He lurched into Jed, catching him with a glancing, clumsy blow.
Jed didn’t react. Nick came at him again and again, until Jed finally sidestepped him and sent him tumbling to the ground with a flick of his wrist.
Nick rolled over on the ground and got to his knees, his already rumpled clothes covered in mud. “What is this? Some sick kind of revenge? You can’t get back at him, so you put me on my ass instead? How does it feel, huh? Is this what you wanted all along? Me facedown in the dirt instead of you?”
Jed said nothing.
Nick laughed, unfazed by his stony silence. “I don’t get it. What did you want me to do? I know I took the easy way out, but you made it impossible for me to do anything else. Letting him beat us both wouldn’t have changed anything. How many times did you say that to me?”
Flo whined, her eyes on Jed, like she knew he wasn’t himself. Max glanced rapidly between the two Cooper brothers, knowing he was watching something terrible unfold, something that had festered for more than a decade.
Nick remained on his knees, his belligerence all but gone. “What do you want from me? You came back here all busted up and distant. Why are you even here, if it’s the last place on earth you want to be?”
Jed looked as though he might let out a heavy, world-weary sigh, but he didn’t. Instead, he shook his head. “I came back here because you asked me to, and I wanted to get to know your children. Maybe you should sober up and do the same.”
He walked away without another word and slammed the cabin door.
Nick laughed again and sat back on his heels in the icy mud. “There’s something wrong with him. He’s always been a stubborn prick, but that bullet might as well have hit his damn head.”
Max swallowed his retort and crossed the yard to Nick’s idling car. He killed the engine and removed the keys. He considered inviting Nick inside to dry off, or calling someone to pick him up, but instead he went inside and shut the door in Nick’s face.
He found Jed in the living room, growling into his phone. Max shook the keys to the Mercedes and tossed them onto the coffee table.
Jed nodded his thanks and said into the phone, “Can you come and get him? I can’t drive him home. I’ll fucking kill him.”
He hung up and dropped his phone beside the keys. “Thanks. Where is he?”
“Where you left him. You okay?”
“Yep.”
Max nodded silently. He’d been nervous about seeing Jed after their encounter the night before, but now the stolen kiss was the last thing on his mind. “Um, you know, I could go with you to Portland? If you didn’t want to go with Nick.”
“I don’t want to go to Portland. Forget about it. Dan’s coming to get him.”
Max knew he was treading on dangerous ground, but something didn’t add up. If he’d interpreted Nick’s drunken rambling correctly, Frank Cooper had hurt Jed in the worst possible way. He couldn’t ignore it. “What about your dad…?”